Press Releases and Open Letters

press release Denouncing Trump Plans to "dominate"

June 3, 2020

Denouncing the Trump Attempt at Military Domination of the United States

A Black man was slowly murdered in Minneapolis to the horror of the world. It has led to enormous protests in over 75 U.S. cities and in other cities around the world.

Rather than deal with pervasive racism in our society and the militarization and brutalization of U.S. police forces, the president is demanding that governors flood their states with National Guard troops and he threatens to send regular army troops into U.S. cities to enforce what he says is the law.

We know what he has in mind. Right after his speech on June 1 he had DC police use tear gas to clear peaceful protesters from a path the president took to visit a damaged church for a photo op.

This is the exact opposite of what is needed.

The turning of U.S. police into paramilitary forces, armed to the teeth and trained to see citizens as enemies can only end in unjustified violence against the people. We remember that 50 years ago National Guard troops massacred students after a protest at Kent State. In contrast look at what is happening in Newark, New Jersey this past week. Over 10,000 protested, but the Newark police did not dress in military gear and did not tear gas or pepper spray crowds. So the people of Newark marched displaying righteous anger, but there were no police cars set ablaze, no storefronts smashed and no arrests.

Without offering any evidence the president claims that there is a group called Antifa whose members are terrorists, and which is leading and directing violence at anti-racist protests. Already one of his followers, Rep. Matt Gaetz, referring to Antifa, demands we “hunt them down” like the U.S. hunts down people in the Middle East. His incendiary words easily could inspire someone to start shooting semi-automatic weapons into a crowd of protesters.

In his June 1st speech the president demands something he calls “one law and order”. There are many laws in this country and above all a Constitution which was established to define government powers and individual liberties. “Order” is nowhere demanded by our Constitution.

We fear that the president will use the upheaval over the killing of George Floyd, combined with the pandemic and the growing economic depression as a opportunity to further snuff out our liberties, to divert attention to the gross inadequacies of his Administration, to end the possibility of meaningful protest and to use the U.S. military to enforce his wishes. This would amount to an unconstitutional seizure of power, one that must be resisted. We salute the tens of thousands of people in the streets demanding change and insist that policing be overhauled. We insist that social needs be satisfied by reducing funds going to police departments and the Pentagon.

Open Letter Criticizing Tufts University President

2020

Open Letter

May 9, 2020

President Anthony Monaco

Tufts University

Via email and Twitter @MonacoAnthony

Dear President Monaco:

I’m Administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, founded in New Haven in 1952. Our mission is to advance peace and defend the environment. We’re best known for our Gandhi Peace Award given first to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960.

We are outraged that you are condemning one of Tuft’s own student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), after it won the 2020 “Collaboration Award” given out by Tufts students. Tufts SJP was given its award for its commendable and successful effort to bring groups together to oppose a wrong-headed policy of having police being trained by Israeli security forces. Israeli military and police actions have been criticized by U.N. resolutions for their racism and brutality. Israeli police, solider and security service actions are often censured by human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and Israeli groups like B’tselem. What do they have to teach other than ethnic profiling, fear mongering and cruelty? It is no wonder that the campaign to oppose Israeli training of U.S. police was started by an important U.S. Jewish organization, Jewish Voice for Peace. #EndTheDeadlyExchange is their slogan.

In your statement of April 24 you criticized the Students for Justice in Palestine group at Tufts for its association with the BDS movement and seek to tar the movement as anti-Semitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. The main activity of BDS is boycotts that seek to pressure Israeli authorities to observe universal human and political rights. Jews have frequently led boycott campaigns notably against the Russian czar, Henry Ford, Nazi Germany and against Soviet discrimination. Ten major Christian denominations take part in BDS in one degree or another. Your “anti-Semitism” charge against the movement is nothing more than a smear.

Our organization has noted that the BDS campaign is peaceful, measured and righteous. In 2017 we gave our Gandhi Peace Award to Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian BDS leader.

The organization Promoting Enduring Peace has announced the winners of its Gandhi Peace Award for 2020. The award has been given out since 1960 by the veteran peace and environmental organization. It comes with a medal made of peace bronze forged from the metal of retired nuclear weapons and with a $5,000 cash prize that will be shared by the two honorees. The group hopes to hold the actual presentation of the award in September.

Stanley Heller, PEP Administrator said, “The Board of PEP decided that our best contribution this year would be to give the prize in hopes it would help reorient the peace movement and the Left on an issue where many progressives have gone astray. It’s said that most generals prepare for their last war. Most of the of the peace movement has done the same with Syria, making simple-minded comparisons with the U.S. war against Iraq. Most have ignored the agency of Syrians and their efforts for a democratic uprising, one that has been met by incredible violence and influenced badly by foreign powers, but which still remains active whether hidden in Deraa and Idlib or alive among refugees around the world. Our award this year is to the medical workers and rescuers of Syria. “

He continued, “PEP decided to give the award to two Syrians active in these organizations doing humanitarian work. The first is to Dr. Zaher Sahloul. He’s past president of the Syrian-American Medical Society which has built and rebuilt hospitals in Syria, in recent years underground or in caves. He’s now president of Medglobal which helps not just in Syria, but in 14 countries. He’s a pulmonary specialist in Chicago where he’s currently helping treat patients with the virus.”

“The second honoree will be Mayson Almisri. She is from Deraa where the mass demonstrations began in Syria in 2011. She is a leader in the Syrian Civil Defense, known in the West as the White Helmets. They are the heroes who dig out survivors and bodies from under the rubble of Assad or Russian bombs. They have enraged the Assad regime by making videos of the devastation caused by the barrel bombs and the chemicals. Now during the recent ceasefire, they work at disinfecting, hoping to ward off the virus inside the remnant of Idlib province. “

Press Releases

2019

Mazin Qumsiyeh is the Director of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Institute for Biodiversity Research in Bethlehem (Occupied Palestine). He will be giving the Shafer Lecture of Promoting Enduring Peace Saturday, January 18 at 6 p.m. at the Palestine Museum US, 1764 Litchfield Turnpike, Woodbridge, CT. The topic of his lecture will be "“Environmental justice: a key to peace in Palestine”. The annual Shafer lecture has been given in the past by luminaries such as Frida Berrigan, Timothy Snyder and Phil Donahue.

Mazin Qumsiyeh has spoken all over the world about denial of Palestinian human rights and issues of climate change and biodiversity in the Middle East and the world. He was formerly Director of the Cytogenetics Department at Yale University. He was one of the founders of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History in 2017. In 2018 he was a National Geographic grantee. He is author of several books including "Sharing the Land of Canaan" and “Popular Resistance in Palestine”

We're pleased to add to the program a Palestinian writer from Gaza. His name is Yousef Aljamal. He's a writer, translator and researcher. He co-authored "Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories of Young Palestinian Writers". He did nationwide speaking tours in the U.S. in 2014 and 2019. He came to the U.S. this year to attend the 3rd Palestine Scientists Conference at MIT.

Admission to the Palestine Museum US for the lecture will be at a special price $4.

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Denounce Move to Expel Gandhi Peace Award Winner

Press Release: (Oct. 9, 2019)

For more information contact Stanley Heller, 202-573-7322

Promoting Enduring Peace (PEP) is reacting to news that the Interior Minister of Israel is seeking to get Palestinian Omar Barghouti expelled from his home in Acre. Barghouti is married to an Israeli Palestinian citizen and has lived in Acre peacefully for over 20 years. Interior Minister Aryieh Deri claims Barghouti is “a man who does everything to harm the country.” Barghouti has been targeted because he is one of the leaders of the BDS movement, calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israel to pressure it into respecting the rights of Palestinians and this has gotten the ire of Israel’s right-wing government.

Barghouti was given the Gandhi Peace Award by Promoting Enduring Peace in 2017 along with Ralph Nader. The award has been given since 1960 to laureates such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Tom Goldtooth, Amy Goodman and Jackson Browne

Stanley Heller, Administrator of PEP, said, “We are appalled that harassment of Omar Barghouti is now reaching the stage where he might be expelled from his homeland. He was given the Gandhi Peace Award because we admire his call for peaceful measures to get Israel to abandon apartheid and respect human rights of all the people living within the land it controls. Far from seeking to harm Israelis, Barghouti is trying to get Israeli authorities to obey international human rights laws to take away the reasons for animosity towards Israelis.”

Barghouti has been harassed repeatedly by the Israeli government. He was denied permission to leave Israel to accompany his mother to a Jordanian hospital for cancer treatment. When she died, he was only allowed to go to her funeral after threat of court suit. In 2017 Israeli announced he was under investigation for tax fraud. That year Israel threatened to deny him permission to go to the United States to receive the Gandhi Peace Award only to reverse itself under pressure.